The Letter
by FuckThisShitImmaPanda
Summary: Short piece about Elsa dealing with Anna's absence.


**Hi there!**

**So first of, I wanted to stated that I don't consider myself a writer because I don't really think I have any talent for it and so far I never had enough dedication to try to actually learn how to properly write. I almost never do it let alone post anything, even if I often feel the need to. I'm aware a lot of things might be wrong with that piece because of my inexperience; therefore, I would really appreciate if you could let me know, by review or MP, how I could improve my writing. I'm going to actually try to stick to it this time but I can't really judge my own work or I'm sure I would throw everything away! So please be nice and help me if you feel you can.**

**Also, English is absolutely not my first language but for some reason I write more easily in English than in my native-tongue, go figure... I would really love it if someone or a bunch of someones could maybe point out and/or correct any mistakes or weird-sounding sentences for me. That would be great.**

**I wanted to write something cute and fluffy but all I could come up with was something incredibly weird and sad, so I'm sorry if reading it you felt as much pain and embarrassment as I felt writing it. **

**As inspiration I used a common prompt found on the internet: post/832610035/writing-prompt-30-day-challenge**

**I was supposed to pick a book in my room and use the last sentence as my first sentence. If you can guess what book it is, kuddos to you but little hint: it is not a book originally written in English!**

**With that in mind, thank you for reading, it really means a lot to me!**

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><p>"<em>[...] So be nice, don't let me be so sad: write me that she came back. Tell me she's fine, just curling up on your big dusty sofa with a steamy cup of chocolate, waiting for the commercial break to be over. I need to know the scariest thing on her mind is next week's exam and the looming possibility of failure. Pretend this was just a bad dream fueled by too many episodes of crappy teenage drama shows. I want to convince myself that if I pick up the phone right now I'll hear her overexcited voice listing all the things I've missed in her day. I need to feel like we weren't apart even for a single second; like we're so in tune with each other we're one and the same: all the time and everywhere.<em>

_I want this; I need this because I don't know how to be on my own. I don't know who I am but half of a person. How am I supposed to just live with half of a body, half of a soul, half of a heart? If she were there, she would wipe the frown out of my brow and throw something at my face until I can't even remember what I was worried about. That is how we work: I worry, she sooth. Except the machine is broken now, I'm running on one leg, running in circles looking for her even though I can't feel her anymore. I'm driving myself mad, finding her where she is not, grabbing her arm that is not her own, yelling her name that she can't recognize. _

_I am not a thing but part of a thing and I need to pretend I'm whole otherwise I don't have a purpose and then what's left for me? The Earth can't turn without half of itself and why would it? It wouldn't even be the Earth; it would just be a weirdly-shaped space rock floating around aimlessly, out of orbit and with the queasy feeling you get when you just stepped out of a roller-coaster. You can remember you had fun but you can't remember the feeling of fun because everything around you makes you sick. I can remember the feeling of her warmth but I can't feel it anymore. _

_Everyone say she's gone, even I can feel she's gone but truly I don't know, nobody knows. You think it's the worst: the not knowing part but I, on the other hand, cherish it; it's all I have left. That little window my imagination rushed into the second she didn't get out of that door. I don't know what happened so everything is possible; and in those myriads of possibilities there is at least one where she will come back to me. Life will go on as it should have and all of this will just have been a particularly sadistic nightmare. I need this possibility so I can feel like a person again. _

_So please, call me. Tell me she's splendid with her new tan and has a whole book of stories to tell me. Pretend to invite me over so I can hear how she convinced this guy who is in a band to take her on a road trip to Costa Rica. I will just sit around and explore this scenario until I believe I'm actually living it, until she gets home for good._"

The letter wasn't signed. Nor was it dated or clearly addressed to anyone. Still, Elsa remembers. She remembers the mad thoughts spinning inside her head, the painful despair clawing at her guts making her want to throw up; but more than anything she remembers the hollowness in her heart. Nobody should go through what she's gone through, what she's still going through. While in the hospital she had composed that letter, hands shaking, ink spotting her pale sinewy fingers. She had wanted so bad to send it, to reach out and share her terrifying thoughts. She had intended to, really but after a night of tossing and turning in the narrow white bed she had reread herself and came to the conclusion that she had gone completely and irrevocably mad. Nobody in their right mind talked about someone like that; surely nobody could feel that much pain. So she had buried that letter along with all the things that reminded her of Anna. After that her room had felt cold and bare although her mind seemed clearer and more grounded. Anna's parents were still mostly unaware of her torment, free to concentrate on their own. In the end, Elsa had felt no need to add to their burden.

It took her five years to find the courage to dig up that metal box from out of Anna's garden. Five years of therapy, trips to mental hospital and teary fights with her own parents. She had regained a semblance of sanity, enough to lead a somewhat normal life. The feeling of loss was still there anyway but she had learned to embrace it. Her parents called it self-pity she called it not giving up. If she couldn't be with Anna she sure would miss her with each breath she takes. She already forgot how it felt to have her she won't forget how it feel not to have her.

With a shaky sigh, she caresses the uneven words scribbled down a page torn from a notebook, muddied by years of neglect and bad weather; so much pain in such a tiny, inconsequential object. She was so lost back then, so small and vulnerable. Now she is all those things but hidden from the eye of the onlooker. She finally learned how to play the part, how to pretend to be normal. Isn't it all she's done ever since Anna was gone: pretend? She got so good at it sometimes she could even fool her shrink. The old man would give her a fatherly smile and a cup of tea along with a speech about acceptance and living your life to the fullest; empty words falling off an empty heart. Elsa would just nod and drink, imagining Anna making faces behind the guy's back like when they were kids.

She shouldn't have told him about the box really, she was looking for it. The second she mentioned it he lighted up like he couldn't believe his luck. He had talked in a hurried gleeful tone, urging her to retrieve it, to open it, to face what he called her past. She had nodded again and had kept nodding during the rest of the session, her mind on the best way to avoid her parents' questions at tonight's dinner. No matter how good she was at tricking everybody else, her parents always knew when she was pretending to be okey.

It was only a few weeks later, when finals had been attended and passed, that she had thought about that particular session again. Back then it had sounded ridiculously counter-productive to re-open what was in essence, the physical manifestation of her illness. Now with another summer of doing nothing but reminisce and being a lethargic mess ahead of her, Elsa for once, was tired of passively enduring her pain.

In retrospect she might have needed a little bit more time and common sense to plan her retrieving mission, giving that Anna's parents had moved out, selling their place to an old sour-tempered couple with a gun permit. Nevertheless, with her ears ringing and her heart bursting out of her chest, she had managed to get away with the rusty, earth-smelling box under her arm. She was barely through her apartment door when she tore the lead open, sprinkling broken screws on her impeccable linoleum.

Sitting on the cold hard floor with her back against her bed, she took the time to sort out each item with as much care as she had put in destroying the box itself. With the sight of the familiar objects came the even more familiar feeling of reverence triggered by the contemplation of her most precious treasure. Unbearable warmth spread from the tip of her fingers to the end of her toes, tingeing her translucent cheeks with colors they had long forgotten. It was that same warmth she felt all those years ago when she sat on an ancient, bit up sofa while Anna surreptitiously rested her head in the crook of her neck. She could still taste it, the perfection of this instant.

Brief but powerful, the memory quickly faded when her hand came upon slightly sodden paper. Often she had thought about this letter. Wondering what would have happened if she had sent it but comforted in her idea that she had made the right decision. She hadn't needed any more people to tell her she was losing her sense of reality. Or worse, to laugh at the extravagant proportion of her affection for what was supposed to be just a childhood friend. Wasn't it safer to put the letter back in the box where it belonged? Elsa pondered for a while, turning it around her forefinger and middle-finger until she felt dizzy from the constant movement. It reminded her of that time when Anna and her had attempted the local dance marathon. They had danced together all night until famished and exhausted, Elsa had begged her partner to stop and call it a day. Of course Anna had managed to convince her to keep going. It was how they worked after all, Elsa pushed and Anna pulled. Elsa knew she should have insisted; that the pain in her legs would remind her for the rest of the month of how much of a fool she was. She kept going anyway; because a whole night of Anna just being happy was worth any pain. She had caved at the prospect of feeling Anna against her just one last time before the night ended and before they had to part. She was a fool then and she was a fool now. Here in her lonely room full of eclectic drawings of beautiful redheads and disturbing creatures, she couldn't stop herself from slowly opening that envelope and even more slowly unfolding that letter.

She read it for the third time in her life, sweaty palms smudging the dirt on the barely yellowing paper. She gripped it with all her might, grinding her teeth as the ghost feelings came back to her; the fresh pain of being torn apart from your everything.

After the last echo of her old self faded away, she felt like everything around her had disappeared also. Silence had never felt so absolute. She wasn't sure how she was suppose to feel about it or even how she was really feeling at this particular instant. She thought it would help her but she couldn't tell if the confusion of feelings were better than the throbbing pain she was intimate with. However for the first time since Anna's disappearance, her mind was devoid of her fictional presence, she was finally alone with her thoughts.


End file.
